One of their sites was averaging around 1.85M page views per month with 5 ads on the page, generating ~9M+ "ad impressions" per month. The CPM - Cost Per 1,000 Impressions aka How Sites Make Money - averaged just under $3 last year. So in an absolute perfect world scenario, the site would generate about $300,000+ a year which isn't bad. However, perfect worlds don't exist, especially not in media

Generally ad block is anywhere from 25%-50% depending on content. However, gaming/eSports has the highest ad block rate of any type of media content. Riad confirmed that ~80% of site users were using ad block which is absolutely in line with both gaming media sites and some streaming content

There are a lot of reasons why this is happening but here's 1 very simple chart to illustrate a major point:

There's Google and Facebook and then Everyone Else (Photo: Poynter.org)

Analysis from Pivotal Research group estimated that 71% of all digital advertising went to the two industry behemoths, Google and Facebook, while the trillion other publishers, media companies, social networks, and programmatic middlemen fight for the ever dwindling portion of the pixelated pie.

Now throw in Oath (Verizon/Yahoo/AOL), Twitter, Snapchat and 5 companies have a lock on ~80% of the digital ad market.

I’ve been in publishing professionally since 1981, but anyone can write about media these days, and most of the sites that do are staffed with those whose very first job in media was to do so. Some end up doing a great job and are supported by editors and revenue producers. Others come and go so frequently that it is hard to chronicle their launch and death. But success is not merely a matter of doing one thing well: content or design or technology is not enough in isolation, nor is having one great idea.

The media business, like making a film, involves many different skills, great ideas, creativity, sufficient funding, license to experiment. Then a lot of luck.